Unit 2 engaging with an audience

 Candidate Declaration - I confirm that the attached portfolio is all my own work and does not include any work completed by anyone other than myself

Task 1- Blog/

Task 2- Auditions (start of blog)/

Task 2- Peter Pan Characters 

Nibs- Lost boy

The lost boys are meant to be children, they were never raised, they stayed children and they never had adults to show them right and wrong, so in a way they are quite feral. So for this character, i acted childish. At the start of the journey playing nibs, it was hard to portray nibs the way i wanted, because i had a vision in my head of the character, and it was very different to characters i have played in the past. my ideal version of nibs was a very childish character, but also tries to be a bit of a leader. The way i focused on doing this was, I watched Peter Pan, multiple versions and i payed attention to how the actors portrayed the lost boys, i was then able to use that in my own acting. On stage i made my movements very rushed and excessive a lot of the time. I wanted the audience to see that i am a child who has not been raised by parents and has had to find my own way in a sense. The direction i was given for this character was to 'be a child' we came to a conclusion as a group that the main six lost boys may be slightly older than the rest of the lost boys, but even so are still children themselves and have not been raised by parents. My own self direction for my character was to really just let go, see how the other people in the scene acted and just react to them and play off what the others were doing in the scene. this let me feel the character and be able to get more into the mindset of a child, i really thought primary school children and how it felt to be playing with friends on the playground as an eight year old. 

Bravest girl/ Brave girl

The Brave girls are also meant to be children, but they are also meant to be more grown up, their biggest worries are; where Tiger-Lily has gone, and how to impress Peter Pan, because they all have a really big crush on him and see him as royalty. For Bravest Girl, my main concern, was how people could differentiate me from the rest of the girls and pick me out as a leader, to do this, when the rest of the girls were sat around the fire, i walked around, as if i was checking in all of them, making sure they were okay, I also held myself very differently, i kept a straight posture and my head up. I tried to act like i always knew what was happening. In the scene where tiger lily talks to peter pan and the rest of the brave girls go too, the rest of the brave girls act head over heels for peter Pan and they all gossip about how amazing he is, and i stand there with a straight face, because i know why we are there and there is more important matters and i need to focus on being a leader. My self direction for this character, was to act like a leader and think how a leader would act in those situations. 

Task 3- Audiences and their expectations

The three different audiences that we performed for, were; the relaxed audience, primary school audience and the public. For the relaxed audience, we had to change the performance by making it more accessible, we didn't have as many points where we went into the audience, and the pirates also had less makeup, the main thing was we had to work with the audience, if they shouted out, we just ignored it and got on with the show and we tried to tone it down in a level of scariness so they didn't get frightened, for the primary audience, we had to work with them also shouting things out, they were very vocal and said a lot of things to us, they were actually quite easy to entertain, because they very easily found things funny. With the public audience, there was still children in the audience but there was also a lot of adults, i would say personally this was the hardest audience to perform to, they are a lot harder to impress and are also very judgemental. Personally, i think that the relaxed performance taught me a lot more then performing for the other two audiences, i think the relaxed performance taught me how theatre should be available for everyone, i thought that the audience was very interesting to perform for the relaxed audience. There was parts that were difficult, like the way they reacted, but i loved being able to make theatre accessible to even more people. The primary audience was also interesting to work with they react a lot more and it takes longer for them to settle down after funny parts of the show, but it was magical to be a part of the 'magic' for them. The public audience personally i think taught me how difficult it can be to impress people. 

I think moving forward, to appeal to these same audience, for example the relaxed audience, we could again make shows accessible, it was so nice to be able to create an atmosphere where people who cant usually access theatre could enjoy it and felt haooy and safe in the theatre environment. i think the relaxed audeince is one of my favourite audiences ive ever performed to. 

Task 4- Evaluation

My overall goals for my performance were to to make the people in the audience happy. My goals for the character of nibs was to make the character funny, in a way of him being dumb in a way. but also to make him an entertaining character. That is interesting and fun to watch on stage. Personally, i believe i met these objectives. After asking other people in my cast and people from other casts, i was told that i performed perfectly, and that they could tell that i understood the character i was playing 100% and that i had thought about who my character was and not just said some lines on stage. Personally, i think that i emotionally connected with my character, it took me back to being a younger child again, for me being on the stage as nibs i really reconnected to my inner child again. I think vocally, i could have pronounced some of my lines better i remember being on stage and realising that i mumbled on some of the lines because i was nervous. i think that i was loud enough on stage and people could hear me. For my physicality for the character, i remembered being a child again and the way children behave. on stage, i believe i interacted with other people well. I tried to interact with all of the other lost boys in the scenes with me in at least one point in the show, i wanted to show that my character was very friendly and wanted everyone to get along. In the script it said that my character was a very happy person, but i wanted to add to that myself. i added to that by giving my character more of a friendly personality, i believe that he would be so happy that he believes everyone should also always be that happy too. I think a part of my performance that was effective was at the end of Wendy's song, when nibs is in a world of his own and all the other boys are off stage before him, i think he was just happy in a world of his own, and got distracted because he just believed everything was amazing. I think my areas for improvement were how clearly i was speaking i noticed a few times whilst playing nibs that i lost some of my lines because i didn't pronounce them correctly. My personal goals are to work on my speech and how clearly and loud i talk when i perform. 

My goals for the character of bravest girl, was to show that she is a leader, and she is more serious and cares for the other brave girls. For me to play 'bravest girl' i thought about how i acted in secondary school, towards the end i was a leader of a lot of things so i remembered how that felt and how it felt to be a leader who cared for other people. However for just a brave girl, i just wanted to act like i was still brave, but more shy. For bravest girl i think that my vocality for the character was a lot better. I felt like i talked clearly and loud enough for people to hear.I didn't really  For my physicality as bravest girl, in the scene the brave girls first appear, all the brave girls sit down, but i was walking about, filling up more of the space so there was less empty space on stage. But this also was because i cared about the other girls and i was checking in on them all to see how they were feeling. For brave girls i believe that we all very much always acted like a group, we were always close to at least one other brave girl. for the most part of our performances, me and scarlet as tiger lily and bravest girl didn't leave each others side because we wanted to show that we were leaders, and we had a strong close friendship. I think the most effective scene for me as bravest girl/brave girl was the scene when tiger lily comes back, because of how emotional both tiger lily and bravest girl are, i think this scene really created emotions that the audience could feel. I think all the bravest girls played the character very differently, but we all had our things we brought to the characters, i think when i first thought about the character i thought that she would be friendly and love talking to the rest of the girls. For the future i think my goals for improvement would be to focus more on what I'm doing when I'm not talking, i noticed as brave girls because we didn't talk a lot, it was difficult because we had to react to what others were saying without talking, and i think that i need to work on that a little bit because it was interesting, but also quite difficult.